Monday, October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween everyone. It is pouring rain here so it won't be a very nice Trick or Treat evening for the kiddies! I have bags of treats ready for the great grandkids, as I am sure they will show up.

I remember the "good old days" when our kids were young and would go out trick or treating. We had to drive them around because our closest neighbor (when we lived in the mountains was over a half mile away and down a long driveway). Back then no one gave out boughten candy, etc. The women would bake cupcakes, cookies and candy for all the neighbor kids. And the costumes the kids wore were all made by Mom with stuff put together from what you had available. To me that was the good old days but times have changed so much. And not to the good. I think one of the things that changed it all was when someone put razor blades in something. I can't remember what it was, but...how sad is that? But of course we knew exactly who our neighbors were back then and had been neighbors for years.

Last week was one of those week when you want to pull out your hair. I had been nursing my desktop monitor for a couple weeks and thought I had the problem figured out. I thought it was the graphic card driver, since my grandson had to replace mine before I could update to Windows 10. But after a few days it started acting up again. I had purchased a new one the last time I went to Costco and had just about decided I could take it back. I am so glad I didn't because I had to hook up the new one. Well the new one has HDMI cable and not the old serial port kind. I didn't even know if my computer had HDMI since my grandson built it quite a few years ago. Luckily it does. But I couldn't get my speakers to work after I got the monitor hooked up! Well, I had accidentally unplugged the electrical cord to the battery back up. I have so many ugly black wires, etc. stuck in behind everything! Tacky looking!

We went to a family celebration Saturday night and it was so special. It was a very special occasion and I won't go into the reason for it but there was lots of food and lots of tears flowing. Something we had been keeping our fingers crossed for for years.

This October has been the wettest October in history in Western WA. It has not rained only about 5 days out of the whole month! And they are saying our winter will be colder and wetter than usual. Not happy about that but maybe they will be wrong.

Hope your Halloween was treats instead of tricks!
Our little goblins have been here and got their treats. So darn cute! We had Spiderman, a Unicorn and a Swat guy!

Friday, October 14, 2016

Weather! The east coast got it last week and now it is in our corner of the US. Rain and wind and more wind to come. Supposed to get up to 70 MPH gusts. I don't like it. But I guess it is better than earthquakes, hurricanes and typhoons. I am expecting the lights to go out any minute. I have a battery back up for my computers, router, etc. so it gives me at least 5 minutes to shut everything down without it crashing.

I think we got our new TV set up finally. Not the way I want it, but it is about as good as we are gonna get it. I haven't even tried to turn the DVD-Blue Ray player on yet. I am sure it will have to be all re-set but we don't watch it that much since we have Netflix on the TV now. We had to watch Netflix through the DVD player before. I tried the On Demand with the Comcast remote so the great grandkids could watch something different and they finally agreed on something, so I clicked OK! And then they asked if I wanted to buy it? No, I did not want to buy it, so we shut it off! Cheap Great Grandma!

Can you believe what is happening in our Presidential election? It is not very Presidential if you ask me, but what does this old Granny know about anything? I am afraid it doesn't make our country look very intelligent. I am at the point now I will just be glad when it is over.

The above theme reminds me so much of my Grandparent's farmhouse. It was a homestead that my Mother's family had owned since right after the Civil War when my great grandparents loaded up and traveled from Illinois to Iowa in a covered wagon. He was a carpenters mate on the USS Cairo during the War so he built a small house. They lived in that for awhile until later when they built the big house as the family grew. My Mother was born in the big house. I think the house is gone now but I don't know for sure. I know my cousin's sold it when there weren't any son's that wanted to farm. It really made me sad when I heard it was sold. I really felt like a part of me was gone. That happens all through a person's life. Little parts keep falling away. New parts are added but we still miss the ones that are gone.

I hope you all have a wonderful week end and I hope your weather is better than ours. Have a good one!

Saturday, October 1, 2016

As you can probably tell, I love all the little cabins, etc. Always dreamed about living in a big log house. Guess it is the western life that I was born with!

A professional psychotherapist in the UK asked for permission to use my Lilac Prediction wallpaper for her website and since I was very pleased she asked, I gave her permission. You can check it out at: http://www.carolinecounselling.co.uk/ I think it looks very nice and I wish her the best of luck in her new venture. The way things are in this world right now, she could be a very busy professional.

We were watching Blue Bloods last night and all of a sudden the new TV started talking to us, telling us that 'Danny is running", etc. so I had to figure out how to get that taken off. I love being old with all this technology!! My dear hubby hates everything tech. He has a flip cell phone! But he can fix your car or your hot water heater so I am not complaining! But it does get frustrating. I really don't think a television has to have so much "stuff" on it. I got on Amazon last night and ordered my husband a Big Number remote so I am hoping I can get it synced to the TV so it will work for him. He just wants to be able to change channel and volume so I am keeping my fingers crossed it will work.

Getting things around for our 3 year old great grandson's over night visit. And then the Hawks play tomorrow early. Our daughter always comes for a visit on Sunday afternoon and we snack and visit so will be a busy one.

Followers

Translate

(A little about me)

I once said I never wanted a computer, BUT...one of my grandson's is in the IT Department at WWU and installed Firefox when he built my desktop computer. I really like it and won't use any other browser now. It is safe, fast and has tons of extensions to make it easy for your browsing. One of the add ons they have available are themes which they used to call Personas. They had been called Personas for several years and became very popular, but someone at Mozilla got the bright idea to change the name. Whatever you want to call them they are still a fun quick way to make your browser personal. You can find my Persona/Theme designs at:https://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/gallery/Designer/MaDonna

I make desktop wallpaper designs to match many of my themes, which you can use as background themes for GMail. You can also use them as a wallpaper for your cell phone. You can find my desktop wallpaper designs at: http://my.desktopnexus.com/MaDonnas/uploads/

I have been making theme designs for my own personal Firefox ever since it was installed. Then it was opened so you could submit designs for approval in 2008. My design called Sunset Over Water had over a million and a half people using it at one time. It is from a photo I took off Chuckanut Drive on our way home from a wedding.

I have always been interested in design. When I was a little girl I designed clothing for my paper dolls. Then designed and made clothes for my regular dolls. I made most of my own clothing in high school. When I was older I designed, sewed and made our 3 kids clothing. When they got married and started having babies I made tons of clothes for our 7 grand kids. I decided to sell some of my designs. Fibromyalgia decided to put a stop to that. Sewing for hours a day was just too much.

I am a bit of an over-achiever and when I start something, I don't know when to quit! I have done a little bit of sewing for our great grand kids, but I know I have a limit and when to stop.

I used to design and make jewelry and sold at bazaars which was a lot of fun.

I work on themes and desktop wallpaper designs almost every day and have enjoyed hearing from people all over the world.

I was asked to design themes for Brand Thunder. They have theme designs for people that use Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and also Firefox. In 2012 I won a Nexus 7 tablet on a pop culture contest they held. They have changed their format so I don't make designs for them anymore.

I now use Photoshop Elements to make my designs. It is a very complicated program to use, especially at my age of almost 80.

Thank you all for your comments and using my designs. I will keep making them as long as I can and people enjoy using them.

A BIT MORE!

I love nature and the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, the animals
that roam our forests and back yards. That is the reason most of my
designs are nature based. I love going up into the mountains with my
husband of 61 years. He knows the mountains well and can take me places
where I can take photos I can use for both Persona designs and
wallpapers. It is getting harder and harder for me to take really good scenic shots, though, because of my age!

We have 3 grown children, 6 grandsons, 1 granddaughter, 4 great
grandsons and 1 great granddaughter. My family is the most important part of my life. I don't
get to see my brother or sister as much as I would like as we all live
in different states and I am not a traveler. My family moved a lot when I
was growing up and I pretty much like to just stay put now.

I loved riding dirt bikes and ATV's. I used to ride my Yamaha dirt bike in poker runs, enduro's and motocross and have a lot of trophies to show for it. And one bad knee after two surgeries! I rode dirt bikes before they had motocross gear for women. Had to buy gear for boys! But my most favorite thing was riding my Kawasaki 454 LTD road bike. My husband had a 454, too and we would go on cross country trips, especially to Winthrop, WA. My last year to ride was when I was 71 years old and it was hard to give up but I knew my strength wasn't up to it anymore. Summer isn't quite as much fun now because I can't ride, but I have so many wonderful memories.

I was born and raised a farm girl. In the early 1990's my husband and I started a group to protect the 500+ acre ranch close to us. A Japanese company had purchased it and wanted to build a development with over 2000 houses. Over 600 people from the community joined our group and we were successful in stopping the development. But instead of farming it like it should be, they built a golf course! We still do all we can to help preserve the farm land.

I have been doing a bit of freelance work, such as designing book covers, business cards, calenders, etc. It all keeps me very, very busy. Plus getting older it doesn't get any easier.